Your very good health

It has been officially ascertained by Her Majesty's Government that being out of work is bad for your health. This "truth universally acknowledged" is based on simple statistics: a greater fraction of the unemployed seek medical help than do their employed counterparts.

Ladies and gentlemen, it is Lunchista's considered opinion that in this case Her Majesty's Government are talking (to use a physicist's technical term) spherical objects.

A large chunk of the workforce in the UK is over the age of 35. By this time in life most people have some nagging health problem like back pain, knee joints that play up, headaches, unexplained tiredness, sugar balance that's going a bit wrong, that kind of thing. Never quite bad enough to cry off work, but still something we'd rather do without. But we carry on regardless, out of lack of time, lack of faith (in our ability to describe the problem to the medical profession, or in their ability to put an end to it), or sheer inertia: and anyway we're healthy enough to hold down a job, so we must be ok.

But then, for some reason completely unconnected with health, we might pack it in. Or the P45 arrives. Sociologists and psychologists and people who know far more about that sort of thing than Lunchista does, say that this often causes people to re-assess their whole lives. You know, what do I want out of life, how can I make my life better, and so on. And I've got all this time...I know, I'll go along and get my knee/back/permanent cold sorted out. Because our healthcare is free, but time-consuming, for employed and unemployed alike.

And so Lunchista is taking her sinusitis to the Doctor's, who have already offered some Antihistamine (in case I'm allergic to something) and an appointment with a specialist (which I can take up at short notice because I have no need to book time off work). Meanwhile our Primary Healthcare Trust are no doubt wrestling with the problem of how on earth Unemployment can increase the chances of Sinusitis: a phenomenon recently identified by their statisticians. Obviously further research is necessary.

And what of Lunchista's real state of health? Well, three days after my final day in my previous job, my teeth stopped bleeding. None of my other habits had changed: same food, same address, same amount of excercise (i.e. shamefully, not very much), same water supply, same teeth-brushing routine, same toothpaste and brush.

Of course I haven't had to see anybody about this: our wonderful Health Service therefore remain blissfully unaware that packing in my job may have saved my life.